Barney Page and Charles Collet and their hometowns of Exeter and Grenoble were picked for the last installment of the Tales of Two Cities series, which turned into a bit of an uphill battle.

Barney had a busy late summer and fitting the filming mission into his schedule was a bit of a nightmare to begin with. To make things worse, Charles had been plagued by ankle injuries for a couple of months and ended up getting surgery to reconstruct his ligaments one week before he was supposed to visit Barney in his hometown. So we did the Exeter bit without Charles and Barney had his mates Paul Cooper and Caradog Emanuel join us, to skate with him. Exteter has a limited offering of spots, so we spent two days in Bristol as well, before flying to France to stay at Charles house in Grenoble.

Fresh out of surgery, with a foot brace and crutches, Charles showed us around his birthplace in the middle of the French Alps. We had already gotten some rain in the UK, but a full day of rain in Grenoble cut our filming time short. But the next two days were sunny again and we were able to get some skating time in. The last day of our stay in Grenoble was Charles’ birthday, so we ended the Tales of Two Cities with a celebration at his house, with all his friends. All is well that ends well...